Wednesday, December 16, 2015

New Trailer For Controversial Film Gods Of Egypt Released.

Gerald Butler in poster for Gods of Egypt. Image via movienewz.com.

Lionsgate has released a new trailer for the controversial Gods of Egypt. The upcoming film by director Alex Proyas (of I, Robot and Dark City fame) has come under criticism for a lack of diversity of its casting, notably for a notable absence of Egyptian and African or Black actors playing the roles of Egyptian gods.

It looks as though there's a whole lot in Gods of Egypt that critics are gonna latch their claws into. The Egypt of the film looks like something out of the minds of the pseudo-historians who make claims that connect Egypt to Atlantis or space aliens or try to come up with explanations about how the non-white, non-European Egyptians could never have built the pyramids on their own because they were too "primitive." (Ever notice how virtually none of these pseudo-science spanks ever claim the Greek or Romans needed the help of space aliens to build the Parthenon in Athens or the Pantheon in Rome?)

Anyway, here's the trailer.

Gods of Egypt stars Scottish-born Gerald Butler (King Leonidas in 300, another film that played fast and loose with ancient history) as the Egyptian god of the desert and of war, English-born Rufus Sewell (The Man in the High Castle) as Urshu, Danish-born Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones' Jamie Lannister) as Horus, Egyptian god of the sky, Australian-born Brenton Thwaites as Bek, Australian-born Geoffrey Rush (Barbosa in the Pirates of the Caribbean series and Academy Award Best Actor winner for Shine) as Ra the Egyptian sun god, and Australian-born Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road) as Anat.

As for actors of African descent in the film, there's American-born Chadwick Boseman (Jackie Robinson in 42, and T'Challa in the forthcoming Captain America: Civil War) as Thoth, Egyptian god of knowledge, and that's really about it.

Gods of Egypt is scheduled for a Feb. 26, 2016 release. The backlash against the film is already here.